Corticosteroids with or without antiviral therapy in elderly patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during the Omicron era: A multicenter real-world study
Shenglin Xu, Zhaohui Huang, Xuejing Zou, Guiping Li, Richeng Mao, Li Liu, Yue Guo, Xiaoyong Zhang · 2026
Read Corticosteroids with or without antiviral therapy in elderly patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during the Omicron era: A multicenter real-world study by Shenglin Xu, Zhaohui Huang, Xuejing Zou, Guiping Li, Richeng Mao, Li Liu, Yue Guo, Xiaoyong Zhang (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13253068.txt.
Description
Shenglin Xu and colleagues compare steroid-only with steroid-plus-antiviral treatment in hospitalized elderly patients with COVID-19 during the Omicron period in a 2026 multicenter study. Older patients still face the highest risk from the infection. Steroids calm harmful inflammation while antivirals attack viral replication, but whether combining them beats steroids alone was unsettled.
The retrospective cohort covered 624 patients aged sixty or older at two Chinese tertiary hospitals, all of whom received systemic steroids. Statistical weighting balanced the two groups on their starting characteristics. After weighting, in-hospital death occurred in 8.09 percent of the combination group against 13.47 percent with steroids alone, a significant gap favoring the pairing. Need for mechanical ventilation, however, did not differ between groups. The authors conclude that adding an antiviral to steroids lowered mortality in this population and merits prospective confirmation.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Shenglin Xu, Zhaohui Huang, Xuejing Zou, Guiping Li, Richeng Mao, Li Liu, Yue Guo, Xiaoyong Zhang |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 32 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |